Anxiety: Using a Very Unhelpful Crystal Ball
As a client once taught me, anxiety can feel like having a mad pilot in your head, constantly yelling worst-case scenarios at you as you navigate life’s skies. It’s the voice that insists on forecasting the storm ahead, even when the weather forecast is for clear skies. While anxiety is a natural, helpful emotion that keeps us safe, excessive anxiety can lead to chaos and undermine our ability to function. Excessive anxiety tends to make us continually use a crystal ball - but one that shows us a dark and cloudy future, never one that’s sunny.
The Evolutionary Purpose of Anxiety
First, it’s important to recognise that anxiety, in moderation, serves an essential purpose. It keeps us aware of potential dangers and can motivate us to prepare for important events, whether that means studying for an exam or ensuring we lock our doors at night. This level of anxiety works as an internal alarm system, guiding us to take sensible precautions and improve our decision-making.
But when anxiety escalates beyond this productive level, it becomes more like a frantic, overzealous co-pilot constantly shouting warnings about every small bump in the air. This pilot’s relentless voice can make it difficult to distinguish between real and imagined threats.
Crystal Ball Gazing and Mind Reading
Anxiety disorders often lead to patterns of thinking that distort reality. One of the most common is crystal ball gazing—a tendency to predict future events as disastrous with, at best, pretty minimal evidence. The anxious mind tries to play fortune teller - but it never predicts winning lottery numbers or lovely surprises; it only foresees catastrophe. Anxiety convinces you that you know how things will end, and, unsurprisingly, the forecast is always negative. This distorted thinking can feel convincing in the moment, but it’s important to remind yourself that these thoughts are simply guesses, not facts.
Similarly, anxiety tempts us into believing we can read the minds of those around us. It makes us think we know what others are thinking—usually something negative about us or our actions. But here’s the reality: we’re not telepathic. Just as we can’t see the future, we cannot accurately know what’s in someone else’s mind. Anxiety tricks us into playing these roles, causing unnecessary stress and complicating our interactions.
Strategies and Therapies for Managing Anxiety
While the mad pilot of anxiety can be relentless, several therapeutic approaches can help quiet it and ground your thinking:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT focuses on accepting anxious thoughts rather than trying to eliminate them. Instead of wrestling with the mad pilot, ACT encourages you to acknowledge its presence without obeying its commands. This therapy teaches you to observe your thoughts with curiosity and compassion, and then turn your focus to actions that align with your values. ACT helps separate you from the anxious voice, enabling you to make more conscious decisions, rather than reacting out of fear.
Key Technique: Diffusion exercises - this is where you label your thoughts. For example saying, “I am having the thought that everything will go wrong”, rather than believing, “Everything will go wrong.” This shift can create a helpful distance between you and the anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT works by identifying and challenging distorted thought patterns, such as crystal ball gazing or mind reading. By examining the evidence for and against these anxious predictions, CBT helps you build a more balanced perspective. It encourages logical thinking, which counters the anxiety-driven assumption that you can foresee disasters. It also encourages behavioural experiments, where you feel the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers advocates in her book of the same title – challenge your thoughts and allow yourself to compare what you thought might happen with what actually happens.
Key Technique: Thought record worksheets - these include writing down your anxious thought, analysing the evidence supporting and disputing it, and developing a more balanced, rational thought.
Schema-Focused Therapy
Schema-focused therapy focuses on the core beliefs that fuel chronic anxiety. These beliefs are developed in early life and become lenses through which we interpret current experiences. For example, a schema of “I am not safe” can lead to persistent anxiety that assumes the worst in every scenario. By identifying and reworking these deep-seated beliefs, this therapy helps reduce anxiety at its roots.
Key Technique: Re-scripting exercises. These encourage you to visualize a past event where you felt anxious and rewrite it with a more positive ending. This helps shift the emotional response to similar events in the future.
Grounding Techniques for Real-Time Anxiety
There are some practical, immediate strategies to help when the mad pilot’s voice grows loud:
Deep Breathing: Engages the parasympathetic nervous system and calms the body.
Mindful Observation: Take a moment to notice details around you—the texture of the chair, the temperature of the air—to break the cycle of anxious thoughts.
Mantras: Repeat a calming statement like, “I can’t predict the future,” or “I don’t know what others are thinking, and that’s okay.”
Conclusion
It’s important to remember you don’t have a crystal ball - and you’re not telepathic. Anxiety will often try to convince you otherwise, but you can learn to question that inner voice and challenge the distress it brings. By understanding that anxious thoughts are not facts - along with the help of therapeutic techniques - you can navigate life with more confidence and calm. The mad pilot may still be there, but it doesn’t have to be in control.